Posted on 03/30/2007 5:09:20 PM PDT by neverdem
Earlier this month, in the case of Parker v. District of Columbia, a three-judge panel of the Federal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia broke with all other federal circuits by holding that a gun-control statute violated the Second Amendment.
In a split decision, the court found that the District of Columbia's ban on handguns and a companion law that requires that legally owned firearms be stored disassembled could not be reconciled with the text of the amendment.
The amendment reads, "A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." The only modern Supreme Court case to look at the issue, United States v. Miller, found that the Second Amendment was designed to preserve the effectiveness of the organized militia.
The Parker case breaks from this precedent by finding that the militia purpose is but one among a laundry list of other individual uses of arms protected by the Second Amendment, including hunting, self-defense, and protection from the "depredations of a tyrannical government."
This last claim, that individuals have a right to take up arms against representative government, was last tried out by the Confederate States of America.
When Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860, many Southerners, fearing that Lincoln would abolish slavery, felt they had no obligation to accept the results of the election. Southern attempts to withdraw from the union quickly led to individuals taking up arms to fight what they perceived as federal tyranny.
As president, Lincoln acted on his belief that violence against the government was illegal and unconstitutional. In his first inaugural address he stated, "It is safe to assert that no government proper ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination."
As he asked the nation to go to war to protect its sovereignty, Lincoln added, "And this issue embraces more than the fate of these United States ... It presents the question, whether discontented individuals, too few in numbers to control administration ... can always ... break up their government, and thus practically put an end to free government upon the Earth."
Lincoln made it clear that individuals or even states did not have the authority to determine what was "just cause" to wage a war against the union. As much as it pained him to send young men off to die, he did so to vindicate the idea that the Constitution and its amendments did not create some kind of national suicide pact.
Following the Civil War, the Supreme Court, in the case of Texas v. White, adopted this view and held that the Constitution did not countenance armed rebellion against the federal government.
The Parker court, by implicitly reviving Confederate constitutional theory and wrapping it in the authority of the federal courts, takes the ideals of conservative judicial activism in a lunatic direction.
The case is likely to be appealed. Let's hope that the rest of the D.C. Circuit knows enough history to recog´ nize that Lincoln, not Jefferson Davis, is the guiding spirit behind our system of constitutional government.
Horwitz is the executive director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence and a visiting scholar at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
"Neither England or France had a large section of their country willing to launch a rebellion to protect against what they saw as threats to their institution of slavery. The U.S. did."
One half of their country, (England & France),also wasn't dependent on slavery for their agricultural needs, etc.
Moan and cry??
They took up arms. Maybe after they were wounded, there was moaning and crying, but a familiarity with the arms of the day, and medical practices would make that inherently understandable.
You do yourself a disservice with your rabid enthusiasm for denigrating people who have the guts to fight for what they believe in, regardless of whether you agree(d) with their reasons for taking up arms.
Was there a shortage of people wanting to come into this country?
I'll admit that there would have been substantial economic inertia, since among other things the farmers that had already bought slaves wouldn't want labor to be imported that would compromise the value of their assets, and immigrants wouldn't want to go where they were unwanted, but in time inertial effects will often be overcome by purely market forces.
What would slaves be used for in the winter months? Although I would expect they would be put to use operating cotton gins, I would think that much of the labor for those could be replaced with steam power if there were not a need to keep slaves occupied.
No less a figure than Tom Jefferson sought European immigrants for Virginia. But in his day, the few European rulers he negotiated with were willing to let their people go.
Beanie referenced the Declaration of Independence. Your link goes to the Constitution.
It looks like a lower-case "united States" for the D of I, and an upper-case "United States" for the Constitution.
Could ideas of the relationship between states have changed in the interim?
Guns beat sticks and rocks.
Is that utility enough for ya?
There was a huge shortage of people lining up to be farm laborers in hot, humid climates, working for low wages on someone else's property.
The profitability of the plantations depended on the low labor costs of slavery. If they had paid enough to attract immigrant labor, I suspect they would have lost money on their crop.
Lincoln, Lincoln
I've been thinkin'
What the hell
Have you been drinkin'?
Is that utility enough for ya?
Certainly, and I wouldn't expect that a 17.5"-barreled shotgun would be particularly less suitable for military use than any longer size, but for the Supreme Court to have sided with Miller 100% it would have had to find that one could not make even a remotely plausible argument that the reduced barrel length would impair military utility. The Court wasn't willing to go that far.
It is generally very bad for a judge to allow a decision to be based upon any argument or evidence not explicitly presented in court and made available to both sides. It may at times be reasonable for a judge to use such factors in deciding whether to dismiss a case without prejudice as opposed to with prejudice (e.g. if a judge finds that the arguments presented are not sufficient but is aware of others that would be--especially if those other factors had only come to light after it was too late to argue them). In that case, however, the new arguments or evidence would be open to challenge once the case was refiled.
So there were no farms in the South after the Civil War?
"I spent a few days near a large plantation in the country, whose owner had five hundred slaves; and I had free access to their huts… But though the slaves were not overtasked, they were provided with only a peck of corn a week. His overseer was ordered to procured coarse waled cloth enough to make each of them two garments a year. Hats and shoes were provided in winter for the wood-choppers and fence-builders, but for no others. The whole expense for food and clothing, reckoning the price of the corn and cloth at the market value, could not have exceeded ten dollars to each slave."
This was at a time when slaves were frequently rented out for well over $100/year, usually with food and clothing to be provided.
Things have changed recently in that regard. :) Most farms in the South after the War were either small farms owned by whites or plantations parceled out among sharecroppers, both black and white.
Almost all the small white farmers and sharecroppers were very, very poor.
Prior to the War, if I remember correctly, the average income of a southern white man was near double that of a northern white man. After the war the whites were not allowed any longer to steal the value of the wealth produced by slave labor, freedmen weren't willing to work as long or hard as slaves had been forced to, and the productivity of the whole region took a giant nose dive.
The reduced productivity, combined with the devastation caused by the war and the massive loss of capital when the slaves were freed, took the South from the wealthiest section of the country to the poorest, where it has been ever since.
Indeed it was. However the damn yanks didn't have a problem allowing slave states to fight for them. Which would sort of screw up your whole theory wouldn't it?
The South should be ashamed but, alas, like all who defend sin, many there are imbued with damnable pride. I find arguments besmirching Abe's motives or his character disgustingly tangential and a bald attempt to deflect guilt away from those to whom it rightly belongs.
Son I ain't defending sin. Shall we talk about the human rights violations propagated by billy yank and his thugs in northern states as well in the Confederacy during their march for 'freedom'? You seem awful interested in calling things 'sin'. Let him who is without sin cast the first stone. What I am defending is my right to honor my ancestors who fought bravely (which until the PC police showed up about 30 years ago no one had a problem with) for what they believed in. A Constitutional Republic based on states rights and limited government.
So you can take the one which you worship (ol' log splitter himself and of whom you seem to show some pride in yourself) and shove it. I am in no way ashamed of what my ancestors did. By the intent of the Constitution, by the words of the Framers, and the Declaration of Independence, they did right.
Interesting. Thanks.
Yes thats right the declaration of independence gives us that right. It is a natural right in any case
Lincoln was an imperialist. Who ignored the Constituion when it suited him. He had people held in prison without trial for merely speaking out against the Union.
Also everyone should keep in mind that the history is always written by the victors of any conflict.
Yes an now that Israel is a nation once again I fear it is soon time for judgement from God upon the United States.
Quite true. However, the victors are not always wrong.
Agreed but you know if the victor writes the history there is always at least some bias. Lincoln did a lot of unsavory things to preserve the Union. And they were not always right or even constitutional.
Short barreled shotguns were banned from private citizens because they were deemed to be inferior killing devices compared to long barreled shotguns...from a military perspective.
So, by that logic, the only weapons civilians should legally possess for self defense is nukes, bazookas, tanks, recoilless rifles, and 50cal gatling guns.
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